Wal*Mart cart prank - effective action or vanity?

I'm curious as to whether or not the real balance reflects the posting balance as far as opinion goes.

I have to go to the local Wal mart & verify the story. :sarcasm:

It's a dumb idea.

As in, it's done in vain, it won't work.

People with a more radical opinion are more likely to show it off, and the more moderate people are more likely to be like "oh, brother" and move on to other things.

I moved it here.

I moved it because I was mis-responding to the post. My apologies to LoZoccalo. (Yet, ironically, I will still be responding to LoZoccalo.)

Mods, remove this if you wish.

--p!

Always worthwhile to check what people really think, unfiltered by the noise.

Bryant
Check it ou--> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Thank god for all these Wal-Mart shoping cart threads! :sarcasm:

I think it is important; it might be a small thing, but it points to our attitudes about how to effectively protest.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

because the way i see it, whether or not it is "vanity" would depend on the mindset of the person doing it (impossible to determine from the outside), not the mindset of the person that answers this poll by clicking "vanity".

and whether or not it is effective would depend on the reaction of the company (unknown at this point).

(for the record, i haven't nor do i plan to)

now, as to whether the OP could be considered "vanity" or "effective"...

Sort of the root meaning of vanity, which would encompass showing off.

Maybe it is a protest against shopper-heard consumerism, a feeling
deep and indescribable only coming out after leaving a shopping
cart full of crap you don't need, and walking out without being
obligated to the desires.

Such an act could even be a spiritual awakening, and in that sense,
if it "could" be an effective action, then i'd have to select
"effective action" . So much depends on intent, whether an action is
a tsunami with a 1 foot wave on the surface, or just a 1 foot wave.

Ghandi's shopping cart, of unpurchased processed cotton, won
an independence conflict.

cotton from the UK in the 20th century.

During the 19th century, UK textile productivity was much lower than India's. So, to catch up, the British imposed legal restrictions on India, which led to eventually the UK supplying India with most of their textiles. Gandhi's protest was about keeping Indian wealth in India, rather than shipping it off to London, and it was about the injustice of the laws imposed on India which allowed the UK to undermine the Indian textile industry.

It is what i meant by "Ghandi's shopping cart, of unpurchased processed cotton", that by weaving their own cotton, india left a full shopping
cart in britain... bankrupting neoliberalism, colonialism and an empire
by an act of economic solidarity.

The new revisionism leaves out all the protectionist measures that
advanced economies have used to get rich, including all the colonial
acts to export the suffering of industrialization to the fringe of
the empire... and ghandi's india "would not be having it!", like
a shopper who decides one day, in the middle of walmart, to turn on
their heels and never return.

I don't think most people realize that ghandi's actions were ultimately
economic, not spiritual fluff, but economic direct action.

and he wanted the contents of that cart to be products made in India, and he wanted to achieve that by removing the irrational legal structure that intentionally put India at a competitive disadvantage with the purpose of having Indian shopping carts filled with textiles manufactured in Britain.

I guess the analogy works in this sense: both Gandhi and WalMart protesters are worried about the exploitation of labor in their communities and want to see more wealth accumulate in those communities rather than see it shipped off to Bentonville, and, a smaller bit of it shipped off to China.

Natural conservatives, who are strategically aligned with progressives
in current times, "paleo-conservatives", distrust federalism, believing
that more local governance is preferable over removed federal agents
who don't listen to local concerns. And in a sense, walmart and these
megacorps represent this corporate imperial "ungoverned" agencies that
are beyond government, superfederal, even more anathema to a conservative
than the european union, or the american federal, much rather contacts
be local, and federalism distrusted. Viewed through that lens, this
invasive federalism of the 20th century has been refined in to walmart
and macdonnel douglas. These supernationals are ungoverned amoral agents
unfettered, in religious terms, "idolators" worshipping
image and position.

Then the natural coalition of libertarian conservatives, paleo
conservatives and progressives, is to oppose this trend towards
"federalization", economically. And ghandi's localism bankrupted
the federalism that is necessary to underwrite neoliberal economic
colonialism.

So what is a rational citizen to make of these super behemoth
corporations that are ungoverned, above the powers of government,
imposed from a central authority above, authoritarian victorian
planners imposing work schemes on the common peasants.

Would ghandi not-shop at walmart, is that all he would not do.
Or, would he take his cart elsewhere in the modern american
suburb, swapping safeway for smiths for seven eleven, maybe he
would be more like the french youth, and burn cars, finding a way
in his economic prescience to defeat the car culture, and in so doing,
keepig the planet's environment from possible destruction.

it most certainly would get the worlds attention. How that would play out is what the real debate should be about. The people who came up with this idea were hoping for media attention. Seems they may have been onto something.

but do they want media attention that makes the wal-mart corporation look bad, or media attention that makes it look like the victim of a bunch of obnoxious fools? Because this stunt is far more likely to generate the latter.

It's one thing if a bunch of kids do something like this but when you have hard working country folk who are pissed about their local stores being put out of business by Wal-mart going around doing this and looking the camera straight in the face giving the reason for their civil disobedience then it could really damage Wal-mart. These people are pissed and they are declaring war on Wal-mart for taking away their lively hood. That promotes a whole different image doesn't it?

:sarcasm:

I don't think that an organization's decisions should be driven by how the media will portray them, but I also don't think it makes sense to purposely do something that the media is sure to spin negatively.

I don't know the media in Fairbanks, so I wouldn't bet the farm that the whole event will be spun like a WTO protest in Seattle (where most of the focus was on teenagers breaking windows). But, I'm guessing that if the choice is between an older person looking the camera straight in the face and explaining their civil disobedience and a crying single mother of three as she works to reshelve items after a long day on her feet, the public sympathy is going to go toward the latter.

It's a matter of opinion, I suppose, whether the public will then redirect their outrage to back to Bentonville, AR, but I sure wouldn't bet the farm on that, either.

you could be exactly right but I don't blame these people who have lost their livelihoods for doing irrational things. The point I am trying to make is that we don't know these people and should not judge them for doing something that seems strange to us. Wal-mart has crushed many local businesses and put people out on the streets. If I were them I might pull some crap with Wal-mart to take out some of my frustrations. This seems to be something that is being missed by most DUers.

Each of us has defined our interpretation of "walmart" based on our
experiences of the place, based on our childhood, neighborhood and
personal exposure, but perhaps none of us have seen each other's
walmart. And then what if they are all different? Could a dictionary
have 10000 names for the same thing that is really not the same at all?

As we are elevated to stereotype, superbly overlooking the witch hunt
nature of attempting to persecute a stereotype and the social paranoia
and deep feelings this elicits. Walmart has become a single word for
disenfranchisemnt of the worker, working poverty, cheap shit, good for
garden hoses, strip mall superparkinglot megastore, insensitive
capitalism, paving over every square inche of the green earth for
a gross and unsubtle replacement. All of that, then packaged in to
an allegory of raging about shopping carts, and the make-work poverty
of the underclass, accepting its lot, as the lot of poverty never
questioning the sovereign invasion of this cult of giant megachurches
in every strip mall, worshipping a politico/economic framework that
interconnects and bankrupts the interests of anti-corporatism in every
country on earth. A behemouth, that unless slain will not stop until
every millimeter of the planet's surface is parking lot.

I don't even understand the rationale behind it (and yeah, I've read it).

"We're gonna leave lots of stuff in carts so you have to stay late and put it back--to stick it to your bosses" is the jist of it...

because that'll work. :eyes:

Workers will be diverted from other tasks, and they'll have to pay overtime or hire more people to be able to do all the work.

A boycott is one thing. But legally adding to the expenses of a profit-oriented business is another.

I had a friend in who would call the 700 Club's 800 number and chat forever with the people taking calls without donating money. The 700 Club had to pay for the calls, it tied up the lines, and it forced them to hire more people to take calls to raise the same amount of money. It was his form of protest. He could have just not donated to the 700 Club in protest. But he took it up a level.

He was nice and conversational with the employees. He learned about their lives and their motivations and their problems. He was also helping the middle and working class to the degree that it increased theh 700 Club's labor costs.

Don't get even, get odd.

What is the purpose of a protest nobody will know about except yourself and the person who's cleaning up your cart?

I mean, really. Anyone who supports this as a valid form of protest really needs to get a life and start living in the real world.

manager what they were doing.

Write a note to the corporate offices in Arkansas. Don't punish the people on the low end of the totem pole.

just wonderin'

maybe you could answer the question-

what is the walmart cart prank?

seriously, i don't know...

I bet the people who are against it are all current or former retail employees. We know this is just going to cause problems for the stockers, clerks and department workers, not for the company.

I am sure with all this exposure (what is this the 10th thread about this) Walmart has been notified and will be on the lookout for cart dumpers. I wouldn't participate in this unless you want legal problems.

And I hope anyone who does it gets arrested.

Redstone

It is a poor choice of action. The shopping cart trick is just messing with the help because it's easier than messing with The Man. And when the help can't keep up with the work required by the "radical action", The Man will dock them pay.

It's far more effective to expose the anti-labor and anti-American practices of Wal-Mart to sunlight than to pile more work on those who seldom get to see it. There are already hundreds of methods of making opposition to Wal-Mart known and effective. If your local metropolitan paper has a business section, Wal-Mart is discussed at least once a week these days. You may not read it, but hundreds of thousands of people do.

I've also written a few times about the covert leafleting I've done at two local Wal-Marts -- clean, cool, and effective. Nobody gets mandatory overtime, no union-busters are called in, and nobody gets fired. Even the big manager of one is looking the other way, because she has sympathies for her employees. (She has said nothing other than, "It looks like litter to me. Just put it in the trash and forget about it.") It is not a stake driven into the heart of the Beast, but it is letting Wal-Mart "associates" know that there are people who are on their side. A leafletter for each Wal-Mart across the country would reach most of the associates quickly.

In a modern, high-tech, managerial Capitalist world, different tactics are needed. The ones being used against Wal-Mart aren't the only ones available, but they are working. The word "radical", as you probably know, comes from the Latin word for "root". Effective radical action strikes at the root. Messing with shopping carts is more like pissing on the leaves.

It was a good try. We floated the idea and we're coming to a consensus. The shopping cart thing looks like a non-starter. But there are hundreds of other things to consider, any one of which may give us the Silver Bullet we want. Even without the bullet -- our efforts are paying off, and will continue to do so.

--p!
Moved from previous location.

If you leaflet, it's possible that you'll be caught and asked to leave the store. If you're just filling a cart, you look like a shopper right up to the very end. It's more likely that you'll be able to complete your mission.

As for getting fired and union busting? Huh?

Twice in the last year, I have been shopping and left my cart in the last aisle, full, for five minutes -- once I left my money in the car and the other time I had to get something I forgot from the first aisle and didn't want to push my cart through the entire length of the crowded store to get it. Both times I returned to find the cart gone, probably to have its contents reshelved by an employee.

I doubt that employee had to stay late, or got fired, or had their union busted because of it.

Basically everyone who advocates for this type of "activitism" should put their name and address on the cards and flyers they promise to leave behind. If they are so sure that the workers will actually appreciate what they did for them, then they should have no problem putting that info on the flyers and shit in the cart.

On a scale of 1-10 this rates about a 2 in difficulty and a 10 in plausable legal deniability, Yet, the apologists and defenders of the corporate beast flow from the woodwork like water from a stream.

Folks can't stomach this?!? We are so fucked. You see, revolution is a violent, ugly, impolite thing. Oooo... They might hit us back! :scared:

I'm going to go shoot myself now, we're done for. :wow:

...are "defenders of the corporate beast". It's not like that kind of thinking is manipulative and a sure recipe for disaster that's shown up throughout history time and time again...nah...

Disaster is not inevitable, only change. This is gonna hurt, regardless.

Oh well then, let's just go ahead with it! :eyes:

is hardly acting in defense of the orporate beast. This leave a cart crap is an imposition on the underpaid workers of Wal-Mart, and will undoubtedly be seen as more elitism.

I like the union led Wal-Mart reform efforts at www.wakeupwalmart.com. They have some smart ideas.

Of course, I think people might object to a lot of ideas because:

1. They don't do anything to directly satiate one's emotions.
2. They are not extreme enough to prove to onesself how hardcore one is.
3. They would require work.

(And let me shift the pronoun, too: "You" now means anyone who thinks that we "need a Revolution" in the USA.)

Do you really think that pranks with the shopping carts at Wal-Mart count as brave, cutting-edge Revolutionary Action? You'd be fucking with the help, that's all.

Bombs. Arson. Assassinations. These are the tools of the Revolutionary. You want violent, ugly, and impolite? Then rest your neck on the lunette and wait for the blade to fall. "A Revolutionary is already dead", said Bakunin. Kill some "Enemies of the Revolution" and then accept your own death. That's revolution.

By the way, Wal-Mart greeters do NOT qualify as "Enemies of the Revolution".

We can make this country into what we want the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is distasteful to most Radicals, who complain incessantly about "selling out" to the "corporate masters", even as their $400 iPods play blues, reggae, punk rock, and other reminders of the upraised fist for which they paid $13 per album.

Cut the Internet and take their iPods away. No more cocktail parties or raves in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. No more American Spirit tobacco for those hand-rolled smokes like Che used to roll. No more condoms for Safe Sex, and damn little sex at all. No more take-out food, cheap beer, electricity, heat, or even the sense of being able to sleep in safety. THEN you'll see where their real interests lie.

The "easy way" involves work, not death. It isn't so easy after all, since it requires patience. It's a slow method, but not so slow that it stalls and fails. It was the method of King and Ghandi and Mandela -- and most of us don't have it even one percent as bad as them or their followers.

The "hard way" involves those bombs, arson, assassinations, and bullets, lots of bullets. You'd rather do it that way? Can you deal with forty or fifty million dead non-combatants in America? Members of your family? Your own spouse and children tortured for information?

I have ZERO respect for such bourgeois revolutionists as wave the red flag in modern America. Do you have ANY idea how terrible a fate real revolution entails? A close friend of mine lost half his older family members to the Italian Fascists. His great-uncle ran an anti-Fascist newspaper, and was taken away one night by some visiting "consultants" provided by Hitler, who tortured him to death over the course of a month. One night they pulled out all the fingernails in his left hand. The next night, they forced mineral oil into him and then flogged him with a metal whip until the blood ran. The next night, it was breaking his toes -- all of them, one by one. The next, they broke the fingers in his left hand. And this continued for 26 more days.

The Corporate Beast can still be tamed by law and need not be bludgeoned to death. So, do we tame the Beast, or become the Beast? We still have a nation that is amenable to making enormous change through non-violent, non-destructive political action -- even through something as un-cool as voting. If we decide that's not "k00l enuff" for us, then our few surviving children will rightly curse us for generations for throwing away the best progressive opportunity that had ever been offered a people, in favor for a self-indulgent drama of blood and fire and death.

Damn us to hell if we ever choose the bullet when the ballot is still available to us.

--p!

In your pajamas? My reality is coming to your neighborhood, soon. Act surprised.

Twice from cops. Each time I wasn't in pajamas, but it was night time. In each case, I fit a profile and a description, but was clearly not a perp. And once from a criminal; or, if you prefer, an armed man intent on relieving me of my money (which I didn't have). There was also another stick-up with a knife. I was also severely beaten by a mugger who was just out for a good time. And then there was the time I was caught in Los Angeles gang cross-fire. Finally, a bunch of local young guys got loaded one night and attacked my house. Five apartments in the house, and I was the only one home that night. They nearly destroyed my car -- and this was only a week after I moved there.

Act surprised? I damn near shit myself each time one of these things happened to me. I don't recommend the experiences to anyone. The tough survivor act gets neither of us any slack. Lots of people have suffered much more than either of us, in no small part because of revolution.

You sound like someone who like straight talk. Tell me, why do you wish violence on anyone? And why do you think tricks with shopping carts are going to help us avoid your violent reality? If and when Revolution comes, Wal-Mart Coporation will be out of business for the duration; if we throw the bastards out peacefully, the shopping cart tricks will be the (sub)urban equivalent of cow-tipping.

Your frustration is understandable, but shopping cart tricks are useless. There's only one cure for such frustration -- Organize! Because revolutions never work out well, and punk-ass pranks only scream to the world that punks have hit town.

--p!

L.A. trained Mark Kroeker brought paramilitary tactics to peacefull Portland Oregon with great effect. He's despised here.

http://www.infoshop.org/octo/m1_portland_cops.html

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=29662

In 2000, the march degenerated into a melee with 100 cops in riot gear squaring off against 300 protesters. Police fired beanbag rounds at protesters, arrested 20 and generated 22 complaints of excessive force. Half of those arrested had charges against them later dropped.

Internet records have been well scrubbed, I was an eye witness. They unloaded quarts of pepperspray on women, children, point blank at the local news cameraman and female reporter whilst shouting LEAVE, GET OUT!

I became very privy to our future that day.

It's that I have trouble believing you after all your theatrics.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Therefore, I won't be reading your posts for a while. But one more thing before I hit the ignore button: please reflect upon how you came to be so incredulous. Were you coerced the same way you try to coerce me?

Interjecting many, many times to impress your own viewpoint then you accuse ME? of attempting to coerce YOU?

Funny world we live in. :lol:

So anyone who doesn't agree with you is one of the Bad Guys.

Where have I heard that before?

The White House, maybe?

--p!

it's a nervous reaction to the cognitive dissonance.

When a company like Wal Mart garners wide public support, despite their human rights record (White slavery, member?) The parasite has established itself as a permanent resident of the host.

The prognosis is not good.

However, I really don't think it would be helpful for setting up unions at wal-mart.

It's just childish...

What will it accomplish?

It's one thing if a bunch of kids do something like this but when you have hard working country folk in Fairbanks, Alaska who are pissed about their local stores being put out of business by Wal-mart going around doing this and looking the camera straight in the face giving the reason for their civil disobedience then it could really damage Wal-mart. These people are pissed and they are declaring war on Wal-mart for taking away their lively hood. This isn't a bunch of kids or as one person put it "Latte Liberals" these are country folk not necessarily liberal but real people who have been hurt by Wal-mart.

That promotes a whole different image doesn't it?

Now, why I have spent this much time on this subject is beyond me.

please, tell me how justifying what amounts to a high school prank in such pretty words will mean to the worker on the floor of a Wal*Mart store. I doubt, very strongly, that it would be effective to turn them, the ones who matter, into pro-union activists, more likely it would have the opposite effect.

You might do some very irrational things. I am not saying they are right or it will be effective because I don't know but if I were in their shoes I would be angry as hell and willing to try anything. I would want to inflict direct damage to the store not just yell and scream.

As to the worker on the floor of Wal-Mart? I still don't buy this argument that they will be hurt by this. I worked at a grocery store in Tusayan, Arizona (Babbitt's) near the Grand Canyon for several years in my early 20's and had to put back items from carts several times. I still punched out at 6:00 and didn't work any harder than I did on any other day. I think that argument is completely bogus and falls flat on it's face. In fact I preferred unloading carts to working in the cooler or taking out the trash or cleaning the bathroom.

Just my 2 cents and we can agree to disagree. This isn't exactly a subject I care that much about but I don't blame the people in Fairbanks for doing this if it makes them feel better. God forbid an old man who lost his lively hood fills a cart and leaves it in the store!!! HOW DARE HIM!!!!

Walmart has put some small retailers out of business in my parent's home town, too. I'm sure it happens all over this country. Walmart is bad in many ways, I am with the Fairbanks people on that. I just don't see how filling up carts, staring into the cameras, and saying whatever they are going to say is going to do any real good. No one is listening on the other side of the camera.

Leafletting in front of the store or something like that just seems to be more productive. However, I understand the Fairbanks people have probably tried that and are beyond frustrated. Maybe this is a last resort kind of thing.

... "vanity" as "ill-conceived".

That ice cream belongs to the store. By leaving it in the sun, you are destroying it. Ethically unsound, IMO.

Sorry, I act how I act regardless of the ethics of the other party. Just my opinion...

Wal-mart CEOs don't work in the retail stores nor do they restock the shelves. :eyes:

This just screams, "I'm a jerk." An action in front of Wal-Mart would be fine. Acting like badly behaved children just pushes fence-sitters to the other side.

hours of my life into working my ass off every second I was there I say this idea is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard. Let me speak from my experience here. I had to deal with this sort of thing virtually every night. It was called "reshop". If reshop took a long time and we blew payroll for the day because of it, we did not hire more workers. One has to understand that retail profit margins are thin(even Walmart's are thin compared to non-retail companies) so the last thing that would be done is hiring more workers. They would simply bust my ass more to get the job done before 9:30 so they could go home with payroll intact and would likely cut everyone's hours at the margins to make up for it. Such a practice would make retail workers' lives a living hell. I emplore you not to do this if you are thinking about it right now. I don't want the millions of retail workers to suffer the nights of pure misery I had when we had a large number of inconsiderate customers.

or an employer who is fundamentaly and systematically dishonest to it's employees, using essentially terrorist acts to keep it's employees in line and make the target profit margins.

A company who swings a heavy bat, leaving local business and economies devistated in it's wake, strongarming American vendors in to bankruptcy, supporting the Chinese, burdening federal, state and local public assistance agencies.

Subverting democracy with a fascist agenda.

But I digress.

I have worked as an engineer on Wal Mart merchandise, formally US made, walmart merchandise.

I have watched them intently for a dozen years now. They are not benign, and their business practices bear close scrutiny.

Yet, every person must eat. Some employees even feed several on a 6K-10K yearly salary.

ANYTHING?

without popular support has no future. And if you never set foot in a WalMart You'll never face that moral dilemma in person :dilemma:

Like I mentioned(perhaps in another thread?) I'm not invested in the idea of carting, but I can't help but think it might get a considerable amount of attention, considering the reactions here at DU. Who Knows?

Please, please, Please! Go to the following sites, and see how little likelihood there is of workers being paid overtime because of carting, how little Wal-Mart actually cares about workers, period; how an increase in worker turnover would actually make them very, very happy.

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/

http://walmartwatch.com/

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart27oct27,1,1353294.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

And then please remember: Other Workers are Not The Enemy, the Owners Are. Pitting Workers against Workers is NOT a Progressive Principle.

god, why do so many people on our side do such stupid things and end up doing nothing but making the rest of us look bad.

...do it in a way that hits the corporate bigwigs, not in a way that only makes it harder for the average overworked, underpaid employee.